


The Cat in the Box

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Capture Kink, Consensual Kink, Dubious Morality, Kink, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Power Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 14:16:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1691267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ok.</p><p>For once in my life I wrote KINK. It's kink. Do not mistake me. It's graphic, and it's kinky. It's consensual that involves two people intentionally toying with non-consensual, roleplaying sexual kidnap and Stockholm Syndrome sex. </p><p>That is kink, and I ain't-a gonna suggest otherwise. </p><p>It's also, as usual for me, just not quite normal kink. I can't get kink right to save my life, so near as I can tell. </p><p>Mycroft. Lestrade. Sexual roleplay, consensual kink, creepy as hell, more than a bit graphic. Story would not work at all as my usual tactful vanilla, I guess. </p><p>I am still not sure if I want to post this. Deletion is a possibility. This is just SO not my norm. Consider yourselves profoundly, extensively WARNED.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cat in the Box

“What you want,” his lover said, “is just a bit of role play. A touch of kink. Safe kink. Yes?”

The older man swallowed, both embarrassed and unsure how it could ever really be done. “It’s crazy. I mean, it’s the opposite of being out of control, ennit?” He ran his fingers through short silver hair. “Kind of hard to give up control and still know you’re in control. Feel unsafe and safe. Wouldn’t do it with anyone I didn’t trust…and I can’t think of one single person I’d trust but you. And you and me—we’d plan it out so well the whole point would kind of disappear.” He lay back in the bed and snorted, softly. “Eh. Just a fantasy, really. Some fantasies you don’t want to be real.”

“No…,” his lover said, brooding. “What you mean is you want them to only be just real enough—just real enough to trigger the feelings you’re looking for. Set off little echoes, yes?”

The first man considered. “Yeah,” he conceded after a while. “Like a ride at a park. Or seeing a scary movie. Not real—just barely real enough.”

“And the form your fantasy takes is too unsafe to attempt?”

“’S bloody insane with anyone I didn’t trust. And not exciting with someone I do trust.”

His partner considered. “It might help if you told me your fantasy, love…”

“Expecting to come up with a solution?”

“I am rather renowned for my analysis and planning.”

“Isn’t this a little beneath you?”

His lover chuckled, and rolled up and over. “No. I think you’re what’s beneath me right now.”

The first man laughed. “Regular brat, aren’t you?”

“Surely you’re thinking of my brother?”

“Must run in families. Always did think you were his role model.”

“Heaven forbid!” The younger man stretched out and kissed his lover on the tip of the nose. “Come on, tell me. I can’t be shocked—and I can’t help if I don’t have the basic details.”

The first man looked up into cool blue eyes lit with fond laughter, and sighed. “You’re going to think I’m sick.”

“No. Been with you too long—I know better. We all have kinks, my dear. You appear to have fewer than most. I don’t mind indulging a few, so long as I’m not required to indulge in mutilation, dismemberment, cannibalism, or the like. I do hope that’s not where this is going…”

“Erg. No. Your brother? Maybe. Not me. Reason I don’t hang around the morgue all that often.”

“Good. You don’t think it’s something I’ll be completely horrified by?”

“Um, no. Actually, among some people you’re known for it.”

The younger man perked up, amused. “Oh, really? Do tell…”

The elder smiled, and brown eyes looked up into blue. “Yeah, ‘fraid so. It starts with me being kidnapped…”

oOo

The younger man entered the pub a half-hour after his lover, and succeeded in slipping through the crowd unnoticed. He found a table backed up against the service entrance, with a good view of the pub counter, where the older man leaned casually against polished oak, watching a game on the telly. He was having a good night, the younger man could see. He occasionally leaned toward his companion, nudging him with his elbow when there was a particularly good play. Judging by the scowls and grimaces on the shorter blond, the two supported opposing teams…and the blond’s team was behind.

A voice came from the booth beside the table, and the younger man heard his brother’s voice say,

“I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for Lestrade’s assurance that whatever you asked for was all part of some sort of strategic game he’s already agreed to. You’d best not have misled him, Mycroft.”

Mycroft sighed heavily, and hunched down deep in the uncharacteristically loose, flamboyant coat he wore…not his brother’s Belstaff, but something more akin to a Victorian great coat, with a deep shoulder cape and a high collar. “Sherlock, do you honestly think I would willingly involve Lestrade in anything I thought would in any way be to his disadvantage?”

“You haven’t assured me you’ve not misled him.”

“What part of ‘strategic game’ didn’t you understand, brother-mine? It’s not a game without some degree of deceit. I promise, it’s all in the spirit Lestrade signed on for…and is intended to achieve an outcome he actually desires.”

Sherlock scoffed. “Is this MI6 training of some sort?”

“It’s top secret,” Mycroft growled. “I can’t tell you more. I can tell you that if you insist on prying or meddling there’s a horrible chance you’ll take a harmless game and turn it into something actually dangerous. Can I for once trust you to just do what I ask and then stand back?”

The sulk was almost audible. Then Sherlock sighed. “Oh, very well. John’s been able to spike two of Lestrade’s pints when he was in the loo, so he’s two shots of vodka up from what he thinks he is. My man will be passing by soon to put the make on Lestrade, and…add his own little bit to advance the chemistry of the evening. After that…”

“Are you really telling me my own plan, little brother?”

Sherlock fell silent. They watched as a large man in a hooded jumper leaned on the counter beside Lestrade, and began a fairly obvious attempt to pick up the older man. Lestrade was jovial, good natured—and not interested. Mycroft watched the pantomime play out. The man in the jumper was, to all appearances, a little drunk, a little pushy, a little angry at being turned down. He held Lestrade’s attention quite well….

“You know John would only do this with Lestrade’s signed statement that he was taking part in a game, don’t you?”

“Of course I know. That or you suggesting it for one of your wretched ‘cases.’ He’d break almost any rule for you and a case,” Mycroft grumbled. At that moment, though, he was grateful for both the signed statement and for John Watson’s tendency to indulge Sherlock. It probably had taken both, and probably even a private chat with Lestrade, before he’d have been willing to tip the mickey into Lestrade’s glass.

“Rohypnol?” Sherlock asked, with the intense curiosity of a chemist and chronic drug abuser. Mycroft sighed—just once a trace of disapproval would have been nice.

“No. Chloral hydrate. John and I agreed it was much better documented with fewer likely lasting complications.”

“So he’ll be a bit more drunk than he thinks he is—and a lot more doped.”

“Yes.”

“And when he meets your people in the parking lot?”

“By the time he knows what’s hit him he’ll be blindfolded, gagged, bound, and bundled in the back of a lorry.”

“Bit of a shock.” Mycroft could almost hear Sherlock’s grin, and gritted his teeth.

In his pocket, his hand reached his mobile, and keyed “send.” A moment later he saw Lestrade draw his own mobile close and squint at it. He prayed the man wasn’t too far gone already to follow the meaning of the message…

oOo

_Trust me. Look in your coat pocket._

Lestrade’s brow crumpled as he frowned in slight confusion. He was definitely a bit over his limit…seemed to be a short-hitter tonight. He looked at the message again.

Right. Mycroft’s ID. He was about to type back that he did trust his partner, when the comment about the coat pocket registered.

He fished down in the depths of the worn overcoat, and found a small cardboard box. He slipped it out, and started clawing at it, frowning all the while. There was tape on it, and it wasn’t opening.

“What you got there,” John Watson said, beside him. A gentle hand slid over his and took the box from his suddenly clumsy fingers. “Here. Let me.” A second later a slim pocket knife had slit the tape, and the box was back in Lestrade’s hand. “Well—open it!” John said, smiling. “See what’s there. Present from Mycroft?”

“Gotta be,” Lestrade said. He opened it. There was a slip of paper, hardly bigger than a fortune cookie fortune, and a big silver ring. The paper said, “Time to go home…you’re due for a roller coaster ride.”

The ring had something etched inside it. Lestrade tried to make it out, then handed it to John. “Can you read that? Don’t have my reading glasses and my eyes are giving me hell tonight.”

John took it, and looked, then his face lightened. “Says, ‘Trust me.’”

“Wha’s the ou’side?” Lestrade said, aware he was beginning to slur his words.

John smiled and handed the ring back. “A silver fox running on a blue shield. Lover’s token?”

Lestrade got a dumb grin. “Could be.” He slipped the ring on. It didn’t fit his ring finger all that well, but it sat perfectly on his right index finger. He smiled at it…and thought about the messages. He laughed under his breath, feeling the faint thrill of adrenaline and the unknown rise, surging against the drunken confusion. “I think it’s time for me to turn in, now. Gotta get home.”

John cocked his head, grinning. “Games not over.”

“I’m winning already,” Lestrade pointed out, then giggled, softly. “And I think I am going to go win some more.” With John’s help he retrieved his phone, tucked away the little slip of paper from the box, and threw away the packaging. Then the smaller man helped him into his overcoat and aimed him at the door of the pub, saying, “I’ll call you a cab. The state you’re in you’ll just call the wrong number. I’ll tell them to meet you in the car park.”

It was dark, out, and foggy. Lestrade hunched closer in his coat, shoving his hands in his pockets. The ring felt heavy and secure on his finger. He looked both ways across the street, then loped over to the parking development, heading into the shadows without a thought beyond that he was feeling a bit muddle-headed.

He turned to face the street, stamping his feet to keep them warm, hoping the cab would show soon. He never even noticed the three men slipping toward him from the shadows of the car park.

They were fast, they were skilled, and they were thorough. Lestrade got out a shout or two—but a hood had gone over his head fast as a flash, his hands were pulled back and bound, and he was tumbled onto what felt like the coarse carpet of a lorry or estate wagon’s back cargo area in no time…and then there was a weight on his back, a slamming of vehicle doors, and they were in motion.

Hands crept up him, slipping the hood part-way off his head. They pressed at his mouth, forcing a gag against his teeth. “Play nice,” a man’s voice said. “They said you’d know better than to get people killed.”

Lestrade shivered, fighting back a desire to thrash against his bonds, and against the man sitting on his back. Grudgingly he opened his mouth, and the man slipped the soft cloth in, tying it tight at the nape of Lestrade’s neck. A second later and padded goggles covered his eyes, the strap tightening at the back of his head, blocking out even a sliver of light. Someone else bound his ankles.

All the bindings were well-fitted, padded, comfortable, and very, very effective.

The man on his back slipped off, and patted his shoulder almost amiably. “Now, you’re just going to have to wait. We’ll be there soon enough.” He heard the men move away.

His sense now was that he was indeed in a lorry, lying belly down on the back cargo area, with at least three men now sitting in the forward portions of the vehicle. He was bound far too well to hope to escape on his own. He’d have to be rescued…

_Trust me._

_Time to go home…you’re due for a roller coaster ride._

Mycroft. This had to be Mycroft. It almost had to be Mycroft playing fairy godfather and fulfilling Lestrade’s fantasy. He drew a breath, feeling the terror back off a bit.

Sonofabitch, he thought, caught between annoyance, admiration, amusement, and arousal. That clever, foxy sonofabitch.

Still…

His head spun, and thoughts didn’t seem to line up right. Too much beer, he thought, frowning. And he had no idea what Mycroft meant to do. His fantasy had involved not knowing—being helpless in someone else’s hands. Being unable to resist.

He shivered.

He hoped like hell he was right, and it was Mycroft.

He hoped like hell Mycroft had ideas for this that would be…pleasant. Frightening, maybe. But pleasant.

He clutched his fist, feeling the silver press into his finger.

_Trust me._

Mycroft had cared enough to let him know just the right amount. He wasn’t terrified, now. He wasn’t expecting to die, or get raped, or mutilated.

It was enough.

The lorry hummed and hacked through the city. Lestrade, just out of habit, tried to count turns, guess directions, listen for landmark sounds. He didn’t get far. His head felt too heavy, and his brains were muddled. Even so, he had the feeling he’d been taken far outside his own usual tromping grounds. Outside London.

He shivered.

In the seats at the front, a discussion had broken out—not quite an argument, but something bordering on a disagreement of sorts.

“Not sure I like leaving ‘im there and leaving.”

“Why not? S’what we’re paid to do.”

“Yeah, but _there._ ”

“Someone wants to play with ‘im a bit,” one of the voices said, sounding amused in a not-very-nice way. “If you’re going to play, go to the playground.”

Another voice gave a chuckle that suggested that the playground might not be much fun—at least, for Lestrade. “All the fun equipment.”

“Slides, swings,” another chuckled. “climbing castles…”

“Dungeons,” another chimed in, sounding a note of glee.

“Leather and chains and whips, oh my!” the first said, sending them all into giggles.

Which wasn’t quite where Lestrade had hoped to go even if it was Mycroft fulfilling Lestrade’s daydream. And if he was wrong—if it wasn’t—

He shuddered.

The lorry turned, and rumbled over seams in the pavement. The sound of the engine and the fwip of the tires echoed as the vehicle slowed, and he knew they were driving into a basement car park. When they stopped it was a matter of second before they’d opened the back, swept him up like a drunk between two of them, and chivvied him onto a lift.

There was no tension in their voices, no concern once they were in the lift. Wherever they were, they didn’t expect to be caught or interfered with.

The lift stopped eight pings up…too many stories to hope he could escape out a window. They rushed him down what seemed to be a corridor—bare, echoing walls, mediocre carpeting under his feet. There was a click and a thump and he was swept into a new space. He was pushed up against what felt almost like a ladder, and something near his wrists gave an ominous click. Then he was released.

He tumbled forward, feeling as though the room was spinning around him, as though his feet were in some alternate universe, as though he was floating on unstable clouds. His arms yanked back as he lurched forward, their bonds attached to the framework behind him. One of the men who’d delivered him laughed, and shoved him back, until he could stand upright.

“Sayonara, sweet dreams, baby,” one said, “look at it this way—you couldn’t afford to spend the night here if you weren’t a _special guest.”_

Then they were gone, the door closing with a thud behind them. It was almost fifteen minutes before he realized he wasn’t in the room alone.

oOo

Mycroft sat on the padded leather bench set near the right side of the room, looking at Lestrade, trying to decide what to do next. Part of him wanted to rush up, unclip the fetter that bound him to the frame, pull off the goggles and the gag, and set him free. This was not his own usual kink…or at least, not a kink he practiced for fun with his lover. He usually saved this kind of fear joyride for captives facing interrogation, when psy-ops were more effective than actual torture. He certainly didn’t usually carry his professional games much further than this. The Geneva Code of Conventions still carried some weight…

If this was what Lestrade wanted—if the game was unfolding as it should—this would ultimately be a treat and a thrill for his partner: just frightening enough to keep him unsure, keep his adrenaline rushing, give him the ride of his life. If Mycroft had gauged wrong what Lestrade was longing for, or if Lestrade had not understood that Mycroft was playing—was in fact watching over him—it would in Mycroft’s assessment be torture.

Consent and willing participation were such complicated things. It was one thing for a person to say, “Yes, you may frighten me.” It was another thing altogether when you actually jumped out of a closet and screamed “boo.”

Lestrade was in the condition Mycroft had hoped: still a bit too drunk, still spinning from the low-dosage mickey finn John had tipped into his drink, disoriented, and clearly aware he was helpless. Adventure television and movies to the contrary, there was little Lestrade could do to protect himself from anything right now. He wouldn’t be thinking entirely clearly, and his emotional reactions to things would be way up, even though his physical sensitivity would be down for awhile, dulled by the alcohol and the chloral hydrate. Part of the game would be to use the time it took Lestrade to sober up a bit to cement his sense of helplessness and dependence: keep him feeling a little afraid, and a lot out of control. Just a little worried it wasn’t Mycroft after all.

He watched his lover’s right hand clench and his thumb trace the ring. He smiled, relieved. At least the ring was giving Lestrade something solid and physical to suggest to him that this was indeed the game he’d desired, the fantasy he’d asked for—not a prelude to degradation and death.

Lestrade was settling himself cautiously, exploring the limits imposed on him by his bonds. The restraint latched to his handcuffs give him only a few inches play away from the ladder frame. His ankle bounds allowed him a full stride, but a small one. His eyes could see nothing. His gag was soft, but silenced him effectively. He could lean forward a foot or so, before his arms were pulled straight back behind him, wrenching his shoulders. He couldn’t sit. He couldn’t turn.

Eventually Mycroft decided it was time. He rose, making no effort to still the sound of his trousers swinging as he walked, his feet falling on thick carpet. He even took a deep breath, and let it out in an admiring huff.

He circled Lestrade.

Lestrade’s head tried to turn, following the sounds.

Mycroft approached, coming to stand just out of range even if Lestrade lunged forward. Mycroft could reach out and touch Lestrade easily. Lestrade couldn’t even head-butt Mycroft.

They stood that way for minutes, Mycroft letting the time tease at his partner. Then he sighed again, and spoke in fluent, liquid Basque. That and Welsh were among his favorite languages for confusing the hell out of people, and Lestrade had spent much of his childhood in Somerset, mere miles from the Welsh border. He didn’t trust Lestrade not to know enough of the language to track his meanings.

 _“We’ve really got you tied up here, love.”_ He reached out and traced Lestrade’s jawline, watching the man jump and twitch. _“I do hope this is what you wanted from me. I know I got permission, but if you’ve changed your mind things could get dicey. I promise, I’ll be watching.”_ He’d always been good with languages—enough so that he shifted his intonations his voice placement, even the timbre of his voice when speaking in a foreign language—and to a lesser degree, when speaking with an accent. He’d cheated, as well, spraying his throat with a cough treatment to numb his vocal chords a bit.

Judging by Lestrade’s reaction, it had worked. His lover wasn’t quite sure who he was. Mycroft suspected Lestrade still heard overtones of his lover’s voice, but with enough confusing elements to leave him uncertain. He crooned, softly, and stroked his lover’s hair. _“Shhhhh, beautiful. I’m taking care of you. You’re safe—even safe to be a bit scared if you want. Silly lover…”_

Lestrade drew in a sudden breath, and seemed to shudder where he stood…then relax. Mycroft thought perhaps he’d heard something familiar—a tone he knew, perhaps.

Mycroft hoped it was enough—but not too much. He turned away, then, and stepped out of the room, letting the doors thud behind him, leaving Lestrade standing, alone, waiting for whatever happened next.

oOo

 

_That bastard!_

Lestrade shivered, feeling the movement of air as the doors of the room fell shut.

 _That bastard!,_ he thought again. If it was Mycroft, the sonofabitch was proving why he was in the top of his field—damn, he knew how to play his victim. If it wasn’t Mycroft, then Lestrade was scared, because whoever it was seemed to be at least as clever as his lover.

He thought about the voice he’d heard, the soft caress over his head and face. He frowned, brows crowding against the rims of the goggles. He wasn’t an expert at voices. He thought the speaker had been a bit higher in pitch than Mycroft usually was, a bit huskier in voice, with a slight nasal resonance quite different from Mycroft’s usual posh twang.

But the gentleness of the intonation, and of the hand stroking over his hair—that had felt to him like pure, unadulterated Mycroft.

_Trust me._

He clutched his hand tight, stroked the ring with his thumb. It had to be Mike. It had to be the setup to his fantasy. They’d talked about it—and about the challenges it represented. Lestrade had known what he was itching for—that freefall, the edge of fear coupled with desire, of seduction and uncertainty, of shame and delight. All of it depending on being out of control, out of the safety lines.

A fantasy of being kidnapped, then slowly toyed with, seduced into cooperating with his own user. It was a fantasy he’d always known he would hate in real life: he was kinky, but not sick. But it was a fantasy that wouldn’t work if it weren’t just a bit real—it depended on that thin trace of fear, of uncertainty, of helplessness. He’d always assumed it couldn’t work—wouldn’t work. He was strong, he was trained, he seldom actually let his feelings completely free. He wasn’t Mycroft, but there was still a little, cold, ticking bit of him that watched and judged and waited and solved problems. If it was all an act, that little voice would mock the pretense and destroy every illusion. If it wasn’t an act the same voice would refuse to enjoy the game until Lestrade himself was broken by games that weren’t games.

It was a fantasy he couldn’t have. Until Mycroft had found a thin little space of possibility.

“It depends on you not knowing,” he pointed out. “You can suspect—but you can’t be quite sure. Almost sure…”

Like the first time he’d been trained in rappelling, and he’d had to trust rope and gravity to bring him safely down the side of a building. He’d been sure of the rig. Almost sure. Not quite sure.

The adrenaline rush had lasted over an hour after that first time down.

He was almost sure this was Mycroft, fulfilling his fantasy. He’d sent the warning. He’d sent the ring. The touch of the man in the room had been Mycroft’s gentleness. The softness in the not-quite-Mycroft voice had been Mycroft regardless.

He thought it was his lover.

He wasn’t quite sure.

He and Mycroft had talked about what it would take to bring it off the way Lestrade dreamed. They’d discussed the tools they’d both be willing to put into play, and the ones they wouldn’t. If it was Mycroft, Mike would work to keep him not quite sure…a touch of drugs, a lot of control, a lot of sensory deprivation. If it was Mike he’d continue to disguise his voice. If it was Mike he’d keep Lestrade off balance, push his helplessness, underline his lack of control, all the while playing Stockholm games and stretching Lestrade’s limits—not because he was a sick sonofabitch, but because that was the fantasy, and what made the fantasy work.

The trouble was, if it wasn’t Mycroft, his captor was likely to do much the same thing—and if it wasn’t Mycroft, it might not end well. Mike would end it with climaxes and tenderness and a magical whisking away of all the shackles, the gag, the goggles. He’d return Lestrade to full control with delight.

Another man might destroy Lestrade, and then kill him.

Logically he thought it had to be Mycroft. He didn’t think he was what most men would consider a target worthy of crime to obtain…and those who would want to obtain him would do so for his connection to Mycroft and Sherlock, not because they wanted a hinky weekend destroying him.

But he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t see. He wasn’t certain.

And, yes, he thought with a sudden rush of gooseflesh, that was exciting. Thinking it was probably Mycroft, but not being sure was exciting. And so long as it played out within the rough limits of his fantasy—it would continue to be exciting, because there would be that little Schrodinger cat possibility that it could go either way.

He could hear footsteps and voices approaching down the outer corridor. He swallowed, and shivered. The door opened, the might-be-Mycroft said something in a low voice and a thick accent to someone beyond, and then the door closed again. The man approached, making no effort to hide his footfalls.

A single finger drifted over Lestrade’s jaw, and that voice—slightly too hight, slightly too husky, placed in the wrong part of the mouth, too fluid to be Mycroft—said something that sounded both wicked and determined. Then Lestrade heard the sound of scissors.

The man cut the clothes from his body, murmuring as he went, turning the process into an excuse for a guided tour of Lestrade’s body. He started with Lestrade’s coat, murmuring something dismissive and irritable—and for that second Lestrade was quite sure it was Mycroft, who had always considered the plain, serviceable water-resistant all-purpose overcoat a fashion nightmare. Then, however, he cut away the tie, which Mycroft had given him and appeared to like rather well, and Lestrade doubted. Surely Mycroft would have taken the time to untie it? Sentiment was one thing, but the waste of a good silk tie was another entirely, after all.

Lestrade’s sense of being a bit too drunk and a bit too hazy was backing off, leaving him too aware of the denuding. The scissors had snipped in a long line over the top of each arm, all the way up to the neckline, when the coat was cut away. The man had taken a moment to do something—Lestrade had suspected he’d searched the coat pockets, collecting his phone and the slim little note that had come from Mycroft: _Time to go home…you’re due for a roller-coaster ride._ Then he’d started on the shirt.

First he’d cut away each button, starting at the throat and working his way down the front, tugging the shirttails from Lestrade’s trousers. He’d cut away the cuff buttons, then snipped delicately up the underside of the arm from the wrist to the armpit, then down the side seam to the hem. The movement tickled, and he could sense the man so close to him, hear his breath, feel his heat.

He thought it was Mycroft. Then something happened and the man gave what sounded like a completely natural, spontaneous rush of cursing in whatever the hell language he was speaking.

Lestrade knew Mycroft was a skilled linguist, supernaturally fast at picking up languages, insanely good at their use. This, though? To swear with the automatic ease of a native?

The man ran the tip of the scissors down Lestrade’s chest, detouring to flick one nipple lightly with the tip. He murmured something sly and speculative, and flicked again. It hurt, though not intensely. It was the first moment he began to sense the power of his own fantasy. If it was Mycroft, the game had just become insanely sexy…dangerous enough but still safe. If it wasn’t Mycroft, it was still somehow sexy—unsafe but seeming almost so. Either way he was helpless to change the outcome.

The man walked away for a moment, then came back. He reached behind Lestrade’s head, and loosened the gag, removing it gently from his mouth. Then the lip of a bottle brushed Lestrade’s lips, and the man said something that sounded like a question. Lestrade sniffed, trying to determine what he was being offered. It didn’t smell like beer, or hard liquor, or wine, nor like a fizzy drink. There was a faint scent of citrus, he thought, and when he listened closely, a minor hiss.

“Mineral water?” he asked.

“Bai, ur minerala,” the man responded, and proceeded to tip the bottle, allowing a thin thread of liquid to pour out. Lestrade opened his mouth, suddenly thirsty, and reluctant to make a scene and refuse. It was carbonated—not Mycroft’s brand or preferred flavor. Mycroft preferred to make his own carbonated water, flavoring it with a trace of peppermint, which he claimed soothed his stomach.

The man stopped pouring, letting a small drizzle run down Lestrade’s chin and fall on his chest. The man stroked the rill, tracing it down from lip to chin, then along the center line of his chest, though his chest-hair. He rubbed the dampness, dragged it to Lestrade’s right nipple, rubbed around, leaving a chill ring around the little bead of flesh.  He murmured something that sounded like a question…a silky, sexy question. Lestrade didn’t answer. If it was Mycroft, it was too early in the fantasy to start giving in. If it wasn’t Mycroft he wasn’t giving the man the satisfaction. The man chuckled, then, and gave Lestrade’s nipple a quick tweak. Lestrade could hear him lean over and put the bottle down a few feet away. Then he felt the man move around him.

A hand cradled Lestrade’s bum, fingers exploring the underside of the curve, tracing the center seam of the trousers, stroking lightly. Then he let go, leaned in close, and both hands dove into Lestrade’s pockets, searching for objects—and taking a tour of the flesh lying underneath the fabric as he searched.

Lestrade’s wallet, his warrant card, a biro, a lucky silver sixpence his granda had carried in WWII, his car keys, the pass card to Mycroft’s flat—all went. Then the hand ducked back in and continued their slow exploration, the man whispering in Lestrade’s ear. He had clever fingers, that found the point of Lestrade’s hips, the sculpted valley running down the inner turn of his thigh-joint, the mound over the pubic bone…

The prick. The stones. Lestrade’s pockets weren’t deep enough for the man to do more than trace those, but he traced them with a firm touch, not shy or hesitant or leaving any doubt that he intended to return. He said something that sounded merry and sprightly, and gave a quick squeeze before his hands withdrew. Then he patted Lestrade’s bum again, fingers still cupping to graze the crease where cheek met thigh.

“Very nice,” he said in thickly accented English. “So many English have no arse.” His speech was slow, and ponderous, as though he had to think through even such a simple statement. “I like,” he added, and squeezed. “Very nice.” Then he let go, and Lestrade felt the sharp, hard tip of the scissors.

The fabric of the waistband was thick and tough. Lestrade’s captor had to work to cut through. Once he was through, though, he was able to slice down the center line of Lestrade’s trousers without hesitation, the back of the blade drawing an invisible line along his pants. The man crouched, and the scissors slipped down the inner thigh, cutting all the way down Lestrade’s left leg. By then the trousers were cascading loosely down Lestrade’s right leg. The man made a small choking sound, as if holding back laughter, and set to work in the thick folds by Lestrade’s ankle. A few moments later the trousers were tossed aside, and the man tapped at Lestrade’s feet, quickly removing both shoes and socks as Lestrade lifted his feet like a horse waiting to be shod.

The man stood again. He picked up the bottle and brushed it against Lestrade’s lips. He leaned close this time, breath tickling over Lestrade’s cheekbone.

“Ur gehaigo?”

Lestrade nodded, and drank. When the man drew the water away, he said, “More.”

He was thirsty. He was also aware he was standing naked except for his pants—and they were likely to go soon.

He felt naked. Even the first night he’d slept with Mycroft, he hadn’t felt quite so naked. He was seen—but couldn’t see. He was touched, but couldn’t touch back.

He drank down three more long swallows before the bottle was taken away. The man who held him captive chuckled, then, and a hand went down and cupped his cock and balls through the knit cotton of his shorts. He said something that sounded pleased. His thumb found the head of Lestrade’s cock, and rubbed softly but firmly, back and forth, and around in a neat little circle. Lestrade felt himself harden, and then felt himself flush. It wasn’t supposed to be this easy for the man, he thought—not in the fantasy, and certainly not for real. He tried to think of all the ways this could end badly. He tried to focus on the fact that this might not be Mycroft touching him this way, weighing, assessing, chuckling as he got stiff. It not only didn’t work, it seemed to intensify the reaction. A man he might or might not know was playing lazily with his cock, and his cock liked that just fine, stirring like a warm serpent in the sun, raising up like a cobra dancing to a flute.

“You will be such a nice boy, when I am done,” the man said, stroking softly. “So nice. But not tonight. Later. Now, sleep.” His hand drew away. A hand reached behind Lestrade and the restraining link opened, letting Lestrade fall slightly forward, no longer attached to the ladder frame.

For a second Lestrade considered jolting forward, making a fight of it, but his head felt thick, and he felt sleepy. Still aroused—intensely aroused—but sleepy. He almost didn’t notice the man taking his arm and leading him, a blind, weak-willed mess, over to a mattress on the floor. He almost didn’t notice himself falling to the mattress, or a blanket being tossed lightly over him. He almost didn’t notice a short chain anchored to the floor being fastened to his ankle restraints, or his hands being set free.

And he absolutely didn’t notice himself falling asleep under the man’s steady hand caressing his crotch as he thrust lazily against his captor’s palm.

oOo

Mycroft tried to decide what he thought of the evening, as he watched Lestrade quickly descend into sleep, breathing slowing even as he responded to Mycroft’s touch. The sleep he understood without question. He’d spiked the bottle of mineral water, determined to play the fantasy out to meet Lestrade’s preferences—slow, steady, seducing more than coercing, subverting Lestrade’s own desires. Bending him, not breaking him. It was time for him to sleep, and wake still in the hands of his captor, at the mercy of his captor—so that his captor might prove merciful.

 _Trust me,_ he’d written. The captor, too, would say “trust me.” If Mycroft and the captor were one and the same, the trust was well-placed. And, yet, it made Mycroft edgy. This game, for all they’d talked it through, for all that they’d laid out the parameters while leaving the details open and in Mycroft’s hands, felt too much like reality to Mycroft. To do it well, he had to be a skilled serpent of a captor, keeping Lestrade on the thin edge of compliance not just with “Mycroft,” but with “maybe not Mycroft.” To fulfill Lestrade’s fantasy, there had to be that little wicked edge of really giving in to someone he didn’t know he could trust….and of ultimately giving pleasure to and taking pleasure from someone who might be his own kidnapper…for real.

Lestrade had fallen asleep because he’d been tired, slightly drunk still, emotionally stressed, and drugged—twice.

His cock had stirred to life beneath Mycroft’s stroking hand because the night was matching the fantasy.

Mycroft wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He wasn’t a stranger. He was Lestrade’s own lover, doing something Lestrade wanted, playing out a complex fantasy he even understood. And, yet—it worked because part of Lestrade, just enough of Lestrade, was responding to the alien thrill of being taken and used, divorced from any power or ability to change, responding on a primal level to being controlled completely.

The thought of giving himself over the same way made Mycroft want to scream. He could think of few things less appealing to him.

His hand cupped over Lestrade’s prick; his fingers fondled now-loose testicles, rolling them softly under the cloth of his pants. His lover sighed in sleep.

Tomorrow Lestrade would be made completely dependent on his captor. His interaction would be focused ever more tightly on touch. He would play along, in part because there was little else do be done.

The only thing keeping Lestrade from being truly helpless was that he could, if he dared, if he _wanted_ , say, “Mycroft, if that’s you, stop,” and the game would stop.

So far Lestrade hadn’t done so—or attempted any of the likely tests. He didn’t choose to break the fourth wall, look beyond the edge of the stage in this little play and see if it _was_ a play. He had let the illusion stand.

_Trust me._

Mycroft found he wished he, too, had a ring that said the same. Lestrade’s fantasy was terrifying.

oOo

Lestrade woke up slowly, feeling groggy, and oddly relaxed in spite of his bonds. There was a strange lightness he couldn’t place. Only weeks later would he realize, with a start, that it was the feeling he associated with childhood, and with long-gone school vacations: the lightness of waking up with no duties, no outstanding problems to deal with, no obligations to be met. Lestrade was a captive. All he had to do was survive. Escape, if possible, but he was already quite sure escape wasn’t possible. That left survival.

All Greg Lestrade had to do was keep on living. Eat, drink, sleep, and not anger his captor enough to take any serious damage points. At some point that might not be enough—if his captor wasn’t Mycroft, but some lunatic nut-job out of a camp porn movie, then at some point all that might be left for Lestrade to do would be die. For now, though, living was the challenge of the moment.

His bladder was full, among other things. His feet were chained, though clearly in such a way that he’d been able to turn freely enough in sleep. His hands were free. It took a moment for him to realize that. Then, realizing, he reached quickly for the back of his head, searching for the fastening to the goggles.

There was no fastening. Lestrade blinked—and realized he couldn’t see, but that he wore no goggles today.

He had to have been drugged, he thought—drugged deeply enough for someone to take off the goggles and replace them with opaque contacts. Realizing that, he realized he hadn’t properly heard the sounds of his own waking—the rustle of a blanket, the slight shush of skin moving on a mattress cover…

He reached gingerly up, and found some form of plug inserted in his ear canals. A cautious attempt to pick them out failed. The process suggested that while his hearing wasn’t dead, it was muted to a substantial degree.

“You are right,” an accented voice said, the sound seeming faint and distant. “there’s no point trying to remove them.” Lestrade felt a hand stroke his jaw, and the distant, fuzzy voice said, “You are quite lovely, this way—helpless, blind. If you like, I shall take you to the bathroom.”

He would need to be taken to the bathroom…he’d need to be released from the binding that shackled his legs to the floor, then led across a room he couldn’t see to find a door he didn’t even know existed. He’d have to be shown the toilet, he thought.

At least his hands were free. He wasn’t ready to be so helpless all self-care was impossible, dependent on the charity of others.

Something was done at his ankles. The shackles remained, as did, apparently the chain strung between them, but the links tying him to the floor were gone. A hand took his, and pulled softy up. The distant voice said, “Get up, now.”

It was harder to do with bound feet, Lestrade discovered. Also harder to do when suffering some mixed hangover—alcohol, and he suspected some kind of sedative on top of that. A drug would explain his sudden slide into sleep the night before, and his passive helplessness for much of the time from the pub onward, as well as his failure to waken when the contacts were placed in his eyes.

His guide placed a hand on his bum cheek, guiding him while making it clear that he had no intention of recognizing the ordinary limits society placed on physical contact between even close associates or lovers. Part-way across the room he stopped Lestrade, then spun him, ensuring the captive was disoriented and unable to determine the placement of the bathroom in the layout of the room. Only then was he taken the rest of the way. Lestrade felt the man claim his hand, then, drawing it to the tank of a toilet, tracing Lestrade’s fingers over the handle, drawing it sideways so he could find the sink.

“I’ll wait,” said the voice. The speaker fell silent, then, leaving Lestrade to imagine him, arms crossed, watching as Lestrade emptied his bladder and bowels, wiped himself, stood, groped for the faucets, and washed his hands. “Now bath time,” the voice said, then, and before Lestrade knew what to do or say, his hands were once more secured, then further secured by being latched to a sudden new chain looped around his waist. Then there was a sound of scissors, and his last article of clothing, the pants, fell away.

He could feel the air of the room stirring over every part of him, as though there were a constant light draft. His nipples hardened just from the chill, and he sprouted goose bumps. His balls drew tight, adrenaline and cool air acting together to put him in alert mode.

A hand took his elbow. “This way. Step high—no, higher, that’s right. Now down. Be careful, it’s deeper than floor depth.”

Lestrade tried to jerk his foot back, and failed. The water was hot—too hot, he thought. Then he put his foot down anyway, unable to keep his balance. He half-fell as his leg descended into deep water, only his captor’s grip on him keeping him upright.  He let himself find a stable balance, then reluctantly allowed the unseen hands push at his other leg, communicating the goal of climbing in entirely.

“In,” the voice said. Lestrade frowned, trying to hear intonations, inflections, patterns of stress, timbre, anything to help him decide if it was really Mycroft. It had to be Mycroft, he thought. The message, the warning, the ring, the way this was conforming to the basic loose form of his fantasy. He hadn’t given tight details, wanting to avoid the feeling of operating from a script, but the basic frame of capture, helplessness, seduction, and sexual use fit the core requirements of the fantasy. It had to be Mycroft. It would be too damned coincidental if it weren’t Mycroft. Yet he couldn’t for the life of him prove it was Mycroft, and the entire scenario seemed unMycroft-like—for the simple reason Mycroft, in spite of his purported “kidnapping” tendencies, either tended to capture you good and proper and fling you in an MI6 holding cell—or he hauled you aside out of daily life just long enough for a little, private, off-the-records conversation. This game of capture and enforced conditioning and seduction was unlike him.

“Sit,” the voice said, and a hand pressed heavily on Lestrade’s shoulder. He said cautiously, feeling behind him. There was no bench. Instead he found he was sitting cross-legged on the wood floor of a shallow, barrel-like tub. The water came just barely to his waist, and it was almost scorching hot—the kind of blazing heat found in spas and Japanese hot tubs, so hot it can barely be endured…at least for the first few minutes, until the skin adapts, leaving tender sensitivity and ease in its wake.

His handler took a moment, unclipping his hands from the waist-chain, then re-attaching them to his ankle chains. He wouldn’t be able to stand, now—the chains would allow him to kneel either on his knees along or on hands and knees, but would keep him doubled over, helpless if he tried to straighten. “Bath time,” the voice said again—it was hard to tell, but the speaker sounded cheerful.

Hands were suddenly on Lestrade, dampening his hair, then working in what smelled like shampoo. The speaker was careful to keep the soap out of Lestrade’s eyes, and his hands were strong but gentle. It reminded Lestrade of being a small boy, when his mother had washed his hair, her fingers raking in under his then tawny-brown, lion-gold hair, massaging and cleaning vigorously. Rather than rinsing his head, the speaker then left him as he was, instead beginning a new attack—this time with a wet, soapy flannel.

The process worked its way from the hairline down. Lestrade’s face was washed, gently, and the area behind his ears. The speaker stopped long enough to place a light kiss on Lestrade’s mouth, then continued washing. His neck and shoulders were cleaned—with more light kisses landing on his shoulders, tracing the permanent freckles burned in by summers spent in the ocean and up on the downs. The speaker washed Lestrade’s back, down to the water line, then started on Lesrade’s chest, combing lightly through the heavy chest hair, and lingering long over Lestrade’s nipples. First the flannel dabbed and patted, then a chill breath was blown over the tender little heads, then strong fingers pinched and played and rolled, pushing right to the limit of pain, and just slightly over.

It had to be Mycroft, Lestrade thought. Mycroft knew Lestrade melted in the face of nipple-play, the more and the harder the better, to just short of injury. And, yet, this was consistent with a captor demonstrating his dominance…

It might not be Mycroft.

“On your hands and knees,” the speaker said, then, suddenly. He tugged hard on the fringe at Lestrade’s forehead, urging him to lean forward and reposition himself. “You’re going to be so nice and clean for today’s games.”

Lestrade considered resisting—decided he needed to try, regardless of who this was. It was time to let My know Lestrade was going to make him work a bit for utter victory—and that a stranger was going to have to work harder, if this wasn’t Mike in the first place. He hunched, sitting squat and sullen, like a toad in a mud puddle, frowning.

“Don’t waste your time, sweetheart,” the speaker said. “I hold all the cards.”

Lestrade heard a tap opened, and in seconds a wash of hot water swept in a flowing current over his toes. The only reason it didn’t burn him was because it mingled with the uncomfortable but endurable water already in the tub. That wouldn’t last—the longer the water run, the hotter the tub would become.

Lestrade panted lightly with the discomfort, and the quandary of whether to surrender, and how.

Sudden fingers caressed one nipple, and the voice said, in its heavy accent, in its distant hum, “You’re a natural. Look how hard you’re getting.”

Lestrade realized he was getting hard—everywhere. Some part of him was responding to being so effectively checked by his captor. This was Lestrade’s first serious attempt at resistance, and it had lasted only seconds before he was faced with an impossible barrier to victory. Not that he’d ever thought he had much chance, but there was something sexy about the mind that solved the issue so swiftly and intelligently, with never a blow struck.

The water temperature was rising, and his knees and shins already felt scalded. He grunted, then gingerly shifted, moving cautiously, coming to rest on hands and knees, arse in the air and quickly growing cold.

“Good boy,” the distant voice said. The sound of the tap ceased; the current of super-heated water slowed and stopped. Lestrade struggled to hear anything else, but the ear-plugs were too effective to let him hear anything more. The loud splash of the tap had been in range—the lapping of water in the tub, or the squish and drip of a flannel being lathered did not.

One hand planted itself firmly in the small of Lestrade’s back. The other slipped between his legs and began firmly cleaning his cock and balls and the area around with a light scrubbing motion, not light enough to be a caress, not hard enough to be even remotely uncomfortable. Indeed, it was as arousing as the nipple-play had been. Lestrade made one feeble attempt to clamp his thighs shut, at least protecting what bits lay between, rather than dangling down or setting up between round arse cheeks that would not stop any attempt to gain access.

The stranger laughed. “You’ve just spent good will on my part to guard two inches of your ‘tween,” he husked, the words lingering as though his captor was looking at him in languid victory. “Is your perineum so very precious, then?” The soapy flannel continued to ease around cock and balls, washing over the inner turn of the thigh and hip, tracing the line of the pubic hair. “You’re so responsive, you pretty, pretty thing. Look at you—hard as a rock and we haven’t even properly begun. Such a dear boy you are going to be.” A hand empty of the flannel dipped and gathered up Lestrade’s genitals, hefting them like a housewife testing the weight of a melon at the greengrocer’s. “If you’re too responsive I’ll have to manage you better. We’ll see.” His bollocks and rod were released. His cock bounced, too hard to dangle down, too heavy not to try.

“First things first,” the voice said, then. “Stay still or I _will_  punish you. We both want this bit over.”

Lestrade gasped as he felt something slim and hard slipped between his arse-cheeks and quickly into his rectum, sliding in with as little resistance as would meet a slim thermometer. The narrow whatever was pressed in deep—and then, suddenly, he felt the gushing heat and pressure as he was filled.

“Clean inside and out,” the voice whispered. “Two rounds should do it.” More hot fluid gushed in in slow installments over the next fifteen minutes, until so much had been added Lestrade couldn’t hold back the thin edge of seepage trickling out of his anus.

Even as he worked, Lestrade’s captor played softly with his firm penis, pushing back his foreskin, thumbing the soft, satiny skin bebeath. Lestrade whined from the mixed sensations—his cock adored what his captor was doing, but his intestines ached and threatened to cramp from the enema.

The captor didn’t relent on either, though, until he was ready. When he was, he hauled Lestrade’s wrist ties, and dragged him to sit on the toilet, emptying himself. No sooner was he done, though, than he was back on his hands and knees, enema tube up his arse and the stranger teasing his junk so effectively it rolled his eyes back in his head.

“Good boy,” the speaker crooned, stroking away firmly. “Good, good boy. Just look at you…I think I’ll take some pictures. You stay here, just the way you are.”

Lestrade didn’t know if the man took pictures or not—he went away for several minutes, his touch gone, leaving Lestrade alone, kneeling on his hands and knees, hair covered in shampoo, cock hard and aching, the enema tube dangling against the back of his thighs and the wand embedded firmly inside him.

He knew if there were pictures he’d hate it…but right now, the thought of his captor taking them was thrilling in a hot and horrible way. Lestrade had nothing—no privacy, no rights, no dignity. These belonged to his captor, now, not to him.

A second later the enema tube was withdrawn, he was dragged to the toilet, still held unable to straighten thanks to the bonds. While he sat he heard the water begin to drain—and then refill. He whimpered, softly, intestines griping as he emptied out the flood of enema fluid. His arse-hole stung, as though something had been added to the formula this time—extract of mint, he thought, smelling the freshness. It burned, not enough to be agony, but enough to make it impossible to ignore his arse.

“Back in,” he was told, as soon as he’d wiped. “Bum in the air, princess. You’re so nice and clean inside, let’s be sure you’re as nice outside.” Then unseen hands began to flannel up his perineum and between his cheeks, the soapy flannel scrubbing almost too hard. Then the flannel was gone, and instead there were firm fingers prodding and stroking the tight skin, poking past where Lestrade’s arse clenched tight. One fingertip slipped in without apparent effort. The same finger felt around, touching, prodding, rubbing in something…something that also burned, slightly—lotion, he thought, or lubricant, spiked with the same minty burn.

“Oh, you precious thing, you,” the voice rumbled. “So help me, you’re gagging for it. I could take you now without stretching you, and you’d be coming for me in seconds. They told me the British like it up the arse, but this is exceptional.” The finger tip stayed inside him, but another hand came and squeezed his cock. He couldn’t help shoving forward—and was smartly smacked on the bum for his loss of control.

“In my time, you good boy, not yours. My choice. Always my choice.” The speaker moved away from Lestrade’s groin entirely, then, and efficiently completed the job of bathing him, swabbing thighs, calves, feet, toes. Then there was a hard rattle, and in seconds Lestrade was being hosed down, bum to scalp, using some form of spray head on a hose. The water was once again just short of bearable, and he moaned.

A second later the speaker once more repositioned his various bond anchors, again pinning his hands to his waist chain, with only slight area of play. He hauled Lestrade upright. “Out—the only dirty left is in your lovely, dirty little mind.” The speaker wrapped a heavy towel over Lestrade’s shoulders and began to towel him dry, working from the scalp down.

Just as with his washing, he was thorough—and frequently stopped to kiss a spot, pinch a full little nipple, tug tentatively at Lestrade’s cock. Once the rest of his body was dry, the speaker ordered Lestrade to bend over. He spread Lestrade’s cheeks and traced his asshole firmly, going around and around. He paused, then returned, this time with more tingling, near-burning lube on his finger. He pushed inside, deep, and found Lestrade’s prostate. He pushed, firmly, and laughed when Lestrade swayed forward and whined.

“How did you like your bath?” he asked, stroking inside, pushing, slipping one arm around Lestrade’s waist, just over the hip-points and under the slim waist-chain.

Lestrade didn’t answer, not entirely sure if he were resisting—or too overwhelmed by the situation, the touch, his own reactions, to say.

The speaker made a small, growling noise, and the finger left Lestrade’s bum, instead slapping hard in a stinging slap across his round cheek. “Answer.”

“I…uh,” Lestrade husked, reacting to the spank with an unexpected wash of shame and excitement. “I…”

Again the spank, sharper and harder—hard enough, Lestrade was sure, to leave a hand print, first white, then red, then fading to pink as it dimmed. “Good,” he got out. “Good. Clean, right? Yeah. Clean.”

“And what do you say?”

His brow furrowed in thought, mind seeming dull and paralyzed with conflicting feelings—glee that Mycroft—it had to be Mycroft—was playing the game so brilliantly. Terror that not-Mycroft—it didn’t sound or act like Mycroft—was not playing any kind of game at all—and that his body didn’t care. Shame, that he was proving so easily overcome. Humiliation that he so clearly was enjoying being overcome. Desire, because the game was burrowing down deep into every bit of his psyche that had wanted to play the game in the first place.

He didn’t have any idea of the real time, but if he took his wake-up as 7:00, then it couldn’t possibly be more than half-nine, and he was already hard, horny, shivering with excitement, shivering with desire and fear and embarrassment. He was, just as the speaker said, “gagging for it,” in every coarse, desperate, dependent meaning of the word. He was just as terrified of it, because either this was a Mycroft playing a game that actually demanded he exceed Lestrade’s comfort zone, or it wasn’t Mycroft and Lestrade’s comfort zones weren’t even in play.

The big, strong hand landed again, the sound ringing clear even through the ear-plugs, the blow hard enough to force Lestrade to sway forward before recovering. “Say it.”

He’d lost the thread of what he had been asked. “What? Say what? I’m….what?”

“You liked the bath. What do you say?”

Ah. Now he understood—and his cock twitched. “Thank you. Thank you for the bath.”

The hand landed again, but this time softly, stroking over the burning skin and fondling the skinny, sensitive crease from cheek to adductor magnus. “Good. Very good. Now, I must go for awhile. I’ll leave you secured for later. Don’t worry if you hear someone come in. Cleaning ladies and staff, that’s all. They may pinch and pat a bit, but they won’t do worse for fear of me telling their superiors.” The speaker spun Lestrade a time or two, then drew him to what proved to be the ladder structure from the night before. In seconds Lestrade was standing with his hands behind his back, clipped securely to the ladder, and his feet spread about a foot-and-a-half wide, and latched to the floor with almost no room to shift at all.

“One more thing,” the man said, and forced a heavy cotton rope of great size into Lestrade’s mouth. He strapped it in place. “There,” he said. “That will keep you from asking favors of the cleaning staff.”

Then he left, the doors giving a soft, resonant “paff” as they swept shut behind him.

The room was empty.

Lestrade was alone.

oOo

Lestrade was not alone. Mycroft sat, patient and pondering, in the adjoining room, looking through the one-way glass at his lover.

This was not going quite as he’d expected. He’d expected more roaring, more resistance, mock or otherwise. He’d expected it to be about the battle, not the surrender. Certainly he’d not expected it to be this silent, intense seduction, this ceding of control. At least, not yet. Not so soon.

He’d made sure to discuss the use of drugs and alcohol with Lestrade prior to making his final plans. It had seemed one way to ensure Lestrade was quickly channeled into the feelings of helpless captivity he desired, and a way to focus him on emotional responses, rather than to the logical thinking that would quickly pick holes in the game—the very problem that had caused Lestrade to consider the entire thing impossible to play out in real-space. Keeping him as relaxed, as controlled, and as logically handicapped as possible for the first stages had seemed like the very best way to ensure Lestrade would not be hurt and would not hurt anyone else in the early, least stable movements of the charade. Mycroft had expected some passivity, then—some blind, open acceptance of the premise, especially as Lestrade had the obvious explanation to fall back on.

But he’d expected more fight during the spans of time when drugs had been least in use—there was a small window between arrival at the elegant, if highly illicit hotel they occupied and the second dose of chloral hydrate in the mineral water, after which Lestrade’s goggles had been exchanged for contacts and the ear plugs put in to deaden his hearing enough to help maintain the illusion that Mycroft wasn’t Mycroft. Then there had been the entire morning—Lestrade had been given nothing since the night before, and only traces of the drug or the prior night’s drinking should have been in effect. Yet Lestrade had accepted the passive role perhaps more easily this morning than he had the night before, showing fewer signs of actual fear compared to tension and arousal….and so silent. As though he’d dropped into a trance in which words were meaningless.

Mycroft clasped his hands together in classic “here is the church, here is the steeple” form, his thumbs folded together and his forefingers pointing upright to the ceiling above. He leaned his mouth and chin against the paired hands, lips pressed tight to his tall fingers. He frowned as he leaned on the slight shelf under the framed window.

Lestrade stood still, bound to the ladder frame. His breathing was steady, but slightly elevated, and Mycroft recognized it from love-play—well past the stage of first arousal, into the stage of restricted focus, when Lestrade would drift on the currents of their play.

It wasn’t he thought, tentatively, about how Lestrade became helpless—it wasn’t about the battle, it wasn’t about the kidnap. It was about what the game allowed Lestrade to indulge in—the feelings of being helpless, being adrift on the tide of feeling. Being desired and manipulated. Even, perhaps, reveling in the shame---who in this culture, after all, didn’t experience some mixed shame and excitement at all the taboos broken in wanting sex in the first place?

Wanting to be taken. Wanting to be out of control. Wanting to be free to drift. Wanting to feel both very, very naughty and dirty, and at the same time not too guilty, as it would not be “his fault.”

The drugs and alcohol, the speedy, efficient kidnapping, the quick application of obvious and effective restraints, the temporary blindness and reduced hearing, the loss of his clothes, even the cued catapult into easy sleep, as though in obedient response to Mycroft’s command, had all combined to let Lestrade jump over much of the set-up drama Mycroft had expected he’d need to reach the feelings the fantasy had implied. Lestrade was already there. The question now was really how far he would want it to go, and how long…. That, and perhaps what sorts of detail would most resonate with the silent man’s triggers.

He’d reacted, visibly, to the suggestion he might be photographed, and to the possibility others might see him—a shiver of fear and excitement. Both could be problematic if played out too fully. Mycroft didn’t want Lestrade to suffer if photos ever went astray or witnesses ever chose to speak out. But illusion was easily come-by….and perhaps Mycroft could find some safe way to supply a few nasty little voyeurs to fill out Lestrade’s inner day dream.

There were certainly a few ways he could start. He didn’t like field work—but he’d been quite good at it, and even better at teaching others—like Sherlock—to make instant and effective use of available resources. He dialed the hotel room service, and had them bring up a few items from the lobby store. Then he slipped grimly into a hotel uniform of polyester-cotton shirt and polyester pants, and spritzed a tie with a saccharine scent brought up with his order.

He entered the next room with heavy foot, with his props in hand. The tie was knotted lightly under the collar of the shirt—he’d made sure the thing didn’t come in contact with his own skin—he had no desire to actually smell that way in future. He paused as he came in, timing himself, then gave a high, startled little squeal—just what one might expect of a cleaning maid surprised by the presence of a kinky client bound in the middle of the room. Mycroft was skilled at the little shift in pitch, and had practiced the laugh and other things long ago, in his brief period of field work. It was useful to be able to change apparent genders…

Lestrade’s head had jerked up at the opening of the door, and he’d twitched at the giggle, arms reflexively moving to cover himself, but restrained by his bonds. Mycroft stepped closer, and giggled again, this time a contemplative note in the laughter. He reached out, and touched…, whispering in a high, breathy voice with a pure East Side accent, “Co-er. Looka- you! Ain’t you the sight…” He reached out and traced a finger down Lestrade’s chest, and giggled again when he twitched. “Tied up tight as rush-hour traffic, you…”

oOo

Lestrade felt a moment of real panic when the door opened. He couldn’t see, had no control who walked in. He wasn’t even sure who held him captive—and if he was held captive by not-Mycroft, the next person in that door might just be his executioner. Even if it was Mycroft in charge, there were a large number of possible people who might enter the room, depending on how Mycroft had interpreted the fantasy-request, and on who Mycroft himself might attract by accident. A suspicious Sherlock, for example. Or Anthea, in a panic at her superior’s extended and uncharacteristic holiday from work, trying to make sure he wasn’t in some kind of trouble he didn’t dare tell her.

The ear plugs made it hard for him to follow what came next. Whoever came wore heavy perfume—one of those sweet, cloying scents that were supposed to be girlish, but were more likely to evoke great-aunts and lilies at funerals. She gave a little gasping giggle, the high notes making it through the muffling of the ear plugs, then crept closer. She giggled again, and touched him, exclaiming in a light voice colored with simpering excitement at his bound condition.

Then, to Lestrade’s dismay, she knelt, and stroked his cock. “Look-a tha’,” she said, laughing, all naughty Cockney girl. Or, no—woman. She didn’t sound young, or small—an older woman walking in on something that might shock her, but not teach her anything new in the world. Lestrade imagined a woman somewhat like Mrs. Hudson—a bit older, a bit lower class, larger and stouter, but much of a muchness. Someone whose reaction to a naked man tied up began with a giggle, and ended wherever a former exotic dancer might like to end up.

She took him in a strong, large hand, and tugged. She was skilled, her grip firm enough, but not so firm the skin didn’t slip up and down the shaft a bit. She drew back the hood of his uncircumcised head, and let it slide back…then took him in her mouth and swirled and sucked, tugging his balls. He moaned, feeling his body respond, his cock fill out under her attention. She had him panting quickly, his breath husking around the gag.

When he was sure she was going to bring him to a fast climax, she stopped, and with a quick motion something closed tight at the base of his cock and balls…some form of cock ring, he thought, or something improvised to serve the same purpose. Then, to his dismay, he heard her talking—not to him.

“Mar’? Got anovver one, yeah. Yeah, I got pictures! Yeah, I got the room number. Sure, maybe la’er. Hang on, sendin’ now. Yeah, I know—nice one, ennit? No, he ain’t the fella what’s payin’ for the room. Seen that one. Olive-skinned fellow with black hair, that one. This un’s bit of a silver fox, yeah? Yeah, sure, if he’s still ‘ere la’er I’ll let you have a go, if he’s alone an’ available. Yeah, La’ers. Ta.”

She leaned in, then, and gave the aching, proud tip of his cock-head one last teasing lick. “Hope your fella won’t mind I took you out on a bit of a test drive while ‘e was out, lovie,” she said, sniggering. “Least you’re all tied up—he can’t figure you did it on purpose. In fact, I’ll make sure of that.” She seemed to disappear out of the range of his hearing, then in a second was back, sticking something to his stomach. “There—all fair and square. He may be right pissed, but he won’t be pissed with you. Now, par’m-me, but I gotta do the clean-up and get on my way.”

He heard her moving around on and off over the next fifteen minutes. His cock remained full and hard, throbbing, the blood cut off by whatever she’d snapped over him. Trying to keep his mind off the woman moving around, who might do anything at any moment, he thought about what she’d said to her friend on the phone. She’d recorded the room number, taken pictures of him—or at least, of his erection—and she and her friend might return if his captor was out. She’d seen whoever had rented the room, too—not Mycroft. Unless Mycroft was in disguise, or using proxies, or the woman had mistaken someone else for the room’s paying occupant….

Olive-skinned and dark-haired. Not Mycroft.

He could imagine a tall, dark skinned man touching him—a dark hand stroking his sun-deprived English-winter white cock. Italian, Mediterranean, Middle-Eastern, Indian, Caribean—so many possible men fit the description. Black Irish, even. Spanish; Portuguese.

Dark hands moving like elegant punctuation over his body, picking out the best parts, calling them to attention…

Not-Mycroft. Not-Mycroft might kill him when he was done playing.

Unless it was Mycroft. Or a proxy. Or…

Mycroft in disguise, his lovely pink-white hands touching, tracing, teasing….

He wished he could peek and see.

He was grateful he couldn’t peek and see.

The woman still moved around the room, first in the bathroom, then in more hidden parts of the suite, then moving around in the main room—a room he’d never seen, could not imagine. All he knew was it had wide double doors and a tall, stable ladder frame structure strong enough to anchor a captive to. And a door into a bathroom. And a mattress on the floor. That was all he knew—entry doors, ladder, bathroom, mattress. He could be surrounded by an entire sexual dungeon, and not know it. Which would explain the cleaning woman’s comparative calm in finding him there. It might be an event that happened just often enough to be amusing…but otherwise not even outstanding. A fringe benefit of a humble job—bound-up sex toys she could play with sometimes.

She was just finishing up, then. She came over, and stood near, her lily-rose-gardenia-whatever scent almost gagging him. “Got a look at what your fella has set aside for you, lovie,” she sniggered. “Going to have quite a time, you are, you lucky, lucky boy.” She flicked a nail over one nipple, and leaned close, husking, “Make a lot of noise, love. They like it when you make a lot of noise…”

And then the doors of the suite opened and closed, and she was gone, and he was left standing there, blind and bound, with something stuck on his belly and his cock high and proud and unable to go down until someone came back and removed the binding at its base.

He whined and squirmed, looking for the first time for some leeway, some give in the bindings that might let him free, to at least remove the ring. It was no use.

oOo

Mycroft had used the time well. He’d arranged and laid out some of the toys he wanted to use, made sure all the items he wanted to play with were at hand. He’d observed Lestrade, and confirmed that even the threat of being captured by an actual stranger was not really overriding his passive investment in his role as sexual object in the hands of active players. The sexual molestation by the presumed cleaning woman, the fiction of snapped photos, the threat of her returning to share him with her buddy, later…none had caused any sign of fight, and all had triggered various levels of arousal.

It told him he’d chosen well—and that he could choose better if he kept in mind his increasing sense of Lestrade’s core fantasy: to be set free to experience what he thought he ought not pursue. To be punished and rewarded in one intensely satisfying package.

But the passivity had to go, at least a bit. Lestrade would feel it more, enjoy it more, if the rules of the game included his active participation…even if the participation were “coerced.”

Mycroft went to the shower, then, and made sure to erase every trace of the “cleaning woman’s” sweet perfume. Then he changed into a loose pull-over Spanish peasant shirt in fine linen and a pair of linen draw-string trousers. He slipped his feet into glove-fine loafers, and returned to the room where his lover waited.

oOo

 

“Well, well, look who’s been a naughty boy while I’ve been gone,” Lestrade’s captor said, on returning almost half-an-hour after the cleaning woman had left. His thick, rich accent purred with a nasty, dirty little edge, as though the thought of Lestrade helpless in the hands of a stranger appealed to him. Lestrade felt the man grip his cock and work it, and he moaned as the friction and tight pressure woke the entire length of the shaft and set the head on fire. There was a sudden painful pull as the man ripped whatever was stuck to his stomach away, tearing out body hairs in the process. “Got everything nice and ready for your coming night. Sheets changed, toys charged, cock fully engaged and on-call. Have fun, courtesy, Agnes Blowditch, maid. What a cheeky message!” He leaned close, then, so close Lestrade could feel his breath on his neck, and said, “And I can see you loved every cheeky minute of it. I may need to see if you play well with others, sweetheart. A party boy, you?”

Lestrade shivered, honestly dismayed at the thought. If part of him was attracted all the more to the sense of cascading helplessly into sexual debauch, part knew that more people meant more leaks—which could mean the end of his relationship with Mycroft, or of his career, or more….too much kink for MI5/6 or the Met to overlook. This man, whoever he was, could ruin Lestrade’s life, as well as take his life.

The man’s fingers dandled his penis, played lightly with his balls. “I wonder if I should leave the elastic on? You’re so very upstanding and upright with that tied tight…” Then he sighed. “No. Other projects, first. Maybe again later.” A second later and the ring was gone, and Lestrade was wimpering as blood redistributed itself.

The retaining chain binding his arm shackles to the ladder were released, as were those restraining his feet, and he was spun, quickly. A fast move led to his arms being reshackled in front of him, then raised high and bound back to the ladder frame, back to the room behind him.

His back to the man behind him.

“Time to start the game for keeps, love,” his captor whispered. One finger slipped between his arse cheeks and prodded against his butt hole, a slow, determined motion. There was still enough lubricant left to make entrance easy. Whatever stinging element was in the lube, it had left his anus sensitive and slightly sore. The penetration of one single finger, the swift friction, and then the pumping motion that followed didn’t precisely hurt, but it burned and stung and set off little adrenaline currents of danger. “Yes. Good. Still easy—tight, but easy. I’ve brought you a present, love—here—get it wet for us, first would you?

Something nudged at his lips. He tried to pull away, but the object followed, pushed toward him by a strong hand, a strong arm, no escape possible. Something hard pinched a thin fold of skin between itself and his front teeth, before making it past and clacking directly against the teeth without a buffer.

“Open.”

He tried to shake his head—only to have the man’s other hand come up, and something that felt sharp and pointy lodge near his ear. A knife? A needle? He had no idea, but the message was clear: if he fought, he’d be stabbed with whatever it was. He went limp, and opened his mouth.

“Taste it, love. Touch it.”

Lestrade complied, stroking the object with his tongue, taking it deep into his mouth.

It was some light metal, he thought, possibly cast aluminium, and roughly the shape and size of a lemon-reamer. It had spiral ridges, too sharp not to be actively uncomfortable going in, too dull to cut flesh or tear the ring of his anus. The wide base flared out, then in again into a neck about two inches across, covered in raised metal nubs that would ensure it was impossible to ignore, even once seated. From the narrow neck it stretched out into some kind of handle that extended beyond Lestrade’s ability to explore.

“Nice and wet, or it will be very bad going in,” the man growled, and thrust it lightly in and out of Lestrade’s mouth.

It would, Lestrade thought with a shiver, be pretty bad regardless.

He was right—though not as right as he had expected. He’d also failed to predict the pleasure that came with the pain and humiliation.

His captor had stood behind him. Lestrade could feel he was dressed—could feel the stir of stiff trouser fabric against his calf, and the sleek, light linen of his shirt sleeve against his chest. One forearm curled around his chest, fingers playing with Lestrade’s nipple. The other hand had moved down to his bum, parting his cheeks by braille, finding his anus by braille, setting the tip of the toy against him. Then the fingers at his nipple had pinched tight, and the hand below pressed the toy hard, and his captor had leaned in and nipped hard on the lobe of his ear, and Lestrade had wailed—not a whine, or a moan, but an outright wail, like a newborn. The toy had been forced in in one long, smooth, lubricated drive, muscle ring on fire, then it had shot into place, and the ring had snapped down hard on the narrower neck…and then Lestrade’s captor had done something at the device had begun to pulsate, hard.

“Now,” his captor said, amiably, “It’s breakfast time.” Without another word or touch he’d unlatched the restraint holding Lestrade’s wrists to the ladder. “Come with me, dear. No-no, you’re going to have to learn how to follow where I pull, as though you were on a leash, like a puppy. This way.” He pulled on the chain shackles at Lestrade’s wrists, and drew him along across the room, after first giving him the inevitable spin or two to disorient him.

Lestrade barked his shins on what proved to be a sofa—hard-stuffed, like old-fashioned sofas, rather than the overstuffed cotton-candy-soft modern sofas that were so common.

“Sit,” Lestrade’s captor said.

Lestrade winced. Sitting would mean sitting with the toy already deep inside him, vibrating hard.

A hand gripped the back of his neck, fingers tight like a wolf’s teeth at his nape. “Sit.”

Lestrade turned, and sat. The toy sank deeper into him, the complex, rippled shape making contact with his interior, with his prostate. The vibration was intense, and the long neck made sure even a squiggle wasn’t’ enough to find a more comfortable position—all positions involved the big pinecone plug prodding and shuddering deep inside him, and pulling and grinding at the door of his butt. His prostate felt a bit like it was making friends with a jackhammer.

His cock, damned traitor, rose up yet again, weeping.

“That’s my good boy,” Lestrade’s captor crooned, and petted his hair. He leaned over and kissed Lestrade on the lips. “What a good, good boy. I think it’s time for breakfast, don’t you?”

Lestrade didn’t answer, until his captor asked again, pinching his nipple firmly. “Yes.”

In truth, he might have been hungry before, but now he couldn’t imagine caring…

“Stay there, I’ve got treats for you!” his captor said, and disappeared into the room. The thrum of the vibrator and the ear plugs made it impossible to tell where his captor was, or even if he remained in the same room with Lestrade. He didn’t dare move, though—the man would be back any minute, and he didn’t dare get up to try to ease the steady pulse in his body.

The man came back in what Lestrade thought might be five minutes—but which might have been forever. A second after the man sat on the couch near him, Lestrade smelled food—food so good it managed to fight its way past his pains, his fears, his shame, and grab his appetite in a half-Nelson, throwing it to the mat.

“Bacon,” said his captor. Two fingers knocked at Lestrade’s lips, which opened almost automatically. Two fingers slipped in.

There was bacon there, caught between the two fingers, accessible only if Lestrade rooted for the food with a probing tongue.

He shivered, and pictured himself—naked on a sofa with a clothed man he couldn’t see. Naked with a clothed man who had washed every inch of his body only hours ago, who’d shoved the great whirring sex toy up his bum only minutes ago, who played with his nipples with all the skill of Sherlock sawing at that violin of his, making music whether Lestrade wanted him to or not. There was no point in resistance. He was helpless. He licked, cautiously, the tip of his tongue pointed and firm as he prodded along the seam between the man’s fingers seeking food. The bacon was good. He was hungry—madly hungry, now that it was brought to his attention.

He ate every bite from his captor’s hand, licking bacon from between tight-gripped fingers, suckling honey from his thumb, lapping tiny spoonsful of water from his palm.  Halfway through the meal he started to cry silently, for no reason he understood: it wasn’t grief, or fear, or anger, or loss. Indeed, it seemed like something sweeter, though he was beyond reason or words by then. His mind was a tangle of desire and shame and satisfied hunger and submission to the hands that touched him, teased his tits, pinched him, stroked his half-full cock. His arse was the abode of dragons, who had their way with him and demanded he like it. He was naked and helpless and had no choice but to play along, and if it turned him on that might be shameful, but it was also inescapably true.

His captor pulled him close against his own chest, still letting him suckle on honey, his free hand moving from titty to titty. “Touch yourself,” he said. “Your hands can reach in this binding. Touch yourself.”

Lestrade tried t shake his head. His captor leaned close to his ear and growled, “Touch yourself, or I shall punish you.”

The words sent a spark of fear through him that was hardly distinguishable from desire. He squealed like a baby piglet, and his hands moved down together. One wrapped tight over his own cock.

“Play with yourself, baby. Give us a good show,” his captor crooned.

He gasped, and leaned against the man, sucking his thumb, senses overloaded. He couldn’t see, his hearing was poor—but his taste, his sense of smell, his sense of touch were all amplified, demanding his attention. He wanked firmly, and felt himself fill again in seconds, as he had when he’d been a young man with genitals on red-alert.

“Look at you,” his captor murmured in his ear. “Oh, look at you. You’re dying for it. You’re crying for it. This is what you were made for, baby—What a filthy, hot little boy you are.”

He could feel his orgasm coming like a high-speed locomotive without brakes, hurtling toward the station at speeds above the speed of sound. A howl built, and he prepared to blow—

And in mere seconds his captor had knocked Lestrade’s hand from his cock, pinched firm and tight until the urge to come faded, then taken a second to turn off the toy in his rear.

“Not now,” he purred. “When I say. Now, follow me.” He grabbed the rattling chains at Lestrade’s wrists, spun him a time or two, and led him back to the ladder, where he once more tied him in place with his face to the ladder and his back and bum to the room.

His captor leaned close, then, and cradled one cheek of his bum on one large hand. “Later,” he said, voice promising delivery with no actual time or date to look forward to. “Later. When I say so. Not before.”

And then he walked away, and silence fell, and Lestrade could no longer tell if he was alone in the room or not. He wined and tried to hump himself on the ladder-frame, but couldn’t gain traction. Then, helpless, he leaned in his chains and yearned for “later” to come soon, and his captor to give the word and set him free.

oOo

His lover only ate from his hand. He only drank from the shallow cup of his palm. He slept when Mycroft said. He woke when Mycroft said. He allowed Mycroft to touch him anywhere, anytime, not only not without complaint, but now with active indications of desire. Sometimes he even baited Mycroft, pushing for this or that, egging him on, until Mycroft spanked him.

He had not once asked, “Are you Mycroft?”

Mycroft thought, as near as he could tell, that Lestrade had chosen to simply take that on faith—that this was his lover, playing the game he himself had requested. Still, it was also clear that even had Mycroft been a stranger who’d taken Lestrade captive, at this point Lestrade would have been willing to go along with that, so long as he was allowed to cling to the pretense in his own mind of thinking this was Mycroft, and that it was indeed all a game. Whether true or false, it was the possibility that it was Mycroft that allowed Lestrade to surrender to the game…and the game seemed to have possessed him.

They were four days into a fortnight vacation leave Mycroft had arranged, not intending the entire time to be spent on this one fantasy. But the fantasy had a life of its own; his lover was his in ways that terrified and awed Mycroft. He’d never realized he could give anyone this much pleasure, or in so strange and demented a fashion. Mind-fuck of this sort hadn’t been his own area of study. It had never been to his advantage to invest too much of even his most rational mind in kink. Like caring, it was no advantage in his work.

“Wake up, love,” he said the fifth morning, his hand curled over Lestrade’s bum, feeling the handle of yet another anal plug just barely butting up against the heel of his hand. He ran his fingers softly over the skin behind Lestrade’s testicles. “Wake up.”

“Mmmmm.” The man turned, and gazed up blindly at his…what? Lover? Mycroft hadn’t fucked him, yet…hadn’t even let him come to climax yet, just teased him till he was mad with desire, then turned off the sexual switches and left him panting and empty. Master? That was closer, but not what Mycroft wanted—not forever. He was less and less sure he even wanted it now. Owner? No.

Captor. It kept coming back to that—in the game in play, he was Lestrade’s captor, who had taken him prisoner and who toyed with his life and future.

What, he wondered, was Stockholm syndrome if played voluntarily for kicks?

He ran a finger over Lestrade’s cheekbones. “Are you awake?”

“Mmmm,” Lestrade agreed again. He nuzzled Mycroft’s hand, almost but not quite inviting him to slip his fingers into Lestrade’s mouth and finger-fuck his tongue. “Mmm-hmmm.”

“I’m going to fuck you today, sweetheart. If you ask me for it. I’ll even let you come—if you beg me for it.”

Lestrade shivered. He had not yet asked. He hadn’t yet begged. Mycroft had been careful, never offering the option when he thought Lestrade might take it. Today, though, Mycroft had reached his Rubicon: time to start the ending, and hope like hell he and Lestrade knew how to get out of this fantasy as easily as they’d known how to get in. Moving from the long tease to the moaning, howling payoff was a step in that direction.

“Do you want that?” he asked.

Lestrade frowned, blind eyes beautiful, the contacts transparent from Mycroft’s side. They were rich brown, the irises permanently blown wide as he stared into what for him was total darkness. “Want?” he asked, as though not sure what the word meant.

“Do you want me to fuck you? Enough to ask for it?”

Lestrade considered, a look of haunting need overtaking his expression, reminding Mycroft of Sherlock in withdrawal. “Y….yeah. I want you to fuck me.”

“You’ll ask for it?”

“Do anything for it.” There was something in his voice that made Mycroft shiver, suddenly sure that “anything” included far too much. “Anything,” he said again, fingers locking on Mycroft’s forearm.

“And do you want me to let you come, too? Enough to beg?”

“Yes.”

Mycroft shuddered. This wasn’t his fantasy, he thought. How had he landed here? How had Lestrade, for that matter—this might be what his subconscious wanted, but it didn’t feel like something his partner would have chosen if he’d known how it would all play out. Still, he was the one who’d been chosen as the master of the game, the keeper of the secrets. It was for him to find a way back out of the labyrinth they’d built together.

“Good,” he said, and stroked Lestrade’s hair. “Good boy. Now, this is what you have to do. Today, sometime, when you choose, you have to find me in our rooms, and get down on your knees and ask me to fuck you. Make sure you make it clear. It’s not just about what I feel—you’ve got to feel like you really asked. Really, really asked. You’ve got to feel like this was your choice. Right?”

Lestrade frowned, and turned away, and Mycroft fretted. Part of the lure of the fantasy was so clearly not having to be the decider—having will and habit and conditioning and morals swept to one side by a greater power, and being subject to another’s will, not responsible for his own. Still, it was the only way Mycroft could see back out—and orgasm was the strongest lure he had to call with, unless he were desperate. He wasn’t yet desperate, just uneasy.

He honestly expected Lestrade to take advantage of bath time that morning, between the time spent on his knees getting his enema and his anal wash. Instead Lestrade acted with the sulky, toddler-style grumpiness Sherlock often seemed to personify, refusing to cooperate, refusing to let Mycroft remove the anal plug, insisting he didn’t need to “go” when he clearly had to, then reversing and trying to dodge the enema tube. He didn’t fight quite hard enough to throw everything off plan, but he was so sulky and sullen that, by the rules of the game now in place, Mycroft was expected to give him a good spanking…and follow it with a prurient, invasive exploration of his privates, both bum and bits. Not sure what was going on, he soon had Lestrade panting in his lap, writhing—but not asking to be fucked.

“You’ve got to ask,” Mycroft said, frustrated. “You can’t tempt me into just doing it—or into asking _for_ you.”

Lestrade rolled over and walked away until he banged into the wall of the suite, then inched around the room until he found the mattress on the floor and lay down.

Lestrade sulked and stormed through the whole day. Snapped at Mycroft’s fingers during meals, refused to lie by his chair when he read.

Mycroft forced himself to remain calm. That was his place in this; that was his job. It was time for Greg Lestrade to come back from his vacation in luxurious, sexual captivity. It was time for Mycroft to take away the indulgence.

By dinner time Mycroft was terrified, as starting the pattern over the next day would only be harder—starting on a note of failure. He retrieved the dinner cart left outside the suite door, and called to Lestrade, saying, “Do you want dinner?”

Lestrade hunkered at the side of the room, wrapped around himself, arms clutching his knees. His blind stare was like an angry eagle’s, looking out over infinity and never coming to rest. His lips tightened.

“Gyros,” Mycroft said. “Hummus and tzatziki sauce. Baklava.” Good things to suck and lick and tease off Mycroft’s fingers.

He could see Lestrade wavering. At last he nodded. Mycroft went over, and led him carefully back to the sofa, sitting him down and curling around his lover, offering him the first taste of gyro meat, then accepting one back in return, licking it delicately off Lestrade’s fingers, then licking the fingers clean of even a trace of grease. They fed each other, silent and careful, lingering and suckling.

Then they were done. Mycroft waited.

Lestrade turned away, offering only his back as he leaned against his captor.

Mycroft felt himself wilt, and sighed heavily. His hand rose, and he stroked Lestrade’s silver hair. His lover’s life was not always easy, he thought, and he was normally anything but indulged or self-indulgent. Nor had he the benefit of growing up inside a freakish mind that demanded he question every aspect of normalcy or sexuality.

But, still, this was a surprising dead end.

“Answer a question,” Lestrade whispered—more words than he’d used in days.

“Hmm?” Mycroft looked up, frowning. “What?”

“Answer a question?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Are you Mike?”

Mycroft shivered, then, beginning to understand. “Yes. I’m Mycroft. I promise.”

Lestrade’s spine sagged in relief. “Thank God,” he whispered. “You can prove it?”

“Would telling you all Sherlock’s real names convince you?”

Lestrade gave a little snort of laughter. “No need. You’re you.” He was silent, then his hand sought Mycroft’s. “Fuck me, Mike? Please? Fuck me blind and make me beg to come. Make me scream. Please, please, fuck me.”

It made sense in one lightning flash, then, but at that moment Mycroft had no time to think about it. Instead he was drawing Lestrade close, pulling him upright, drawing him into the bedroom they’d not yet shared. He was laying his lover out on the mattress, he was spreading his legs wide. He was using everything he’d learned over five mad days about what aroused the man—he was pushing him.

“This is still the fantasy,” Lestrade growled in Mycroft’s ear. “I’m still your captive. Take me, you bastard. Make me want it.”

The next hours seemed endless, as they reprised every theme.

Lestrade was bound, bent over, and Mycroft toyed with his arsehole, smoothing on the cool, satiny, stinging lube. He forced in a toy—hard, uncomfortable toy with a motor strong enough to drive a fully loaded cargo rig from Edinburgh to London. He played with Lestrade’s nipples till the man was sobbing and Mycroft had to stop for fear of bringing him off with nipple-play alone. He changed the bindings and ordered Lestrade to touch himself, then slipped on a cock ring and ordered him to touch himself some more.

He had hours of experience, now, in how to force his lover to the edge, then beyond all edges, without giving him release. He used ever bit. He touched and tickled, he called him a sweet pretty boy and a hot little bitch. He watched Lestrade’s eyelids flutter as his eyes rolled back and he panted on the sheets, sobbing.

“Fuck me, Mike. Please, please, God, just please, fuck me. Please, My…”

A quick slick with a not quite so stinging lubricant; a moment taken to remove the drumming, painful toy pressing into Lestrade’s arse, and he was in…and Lestrade keened, trying to open himself wide and then wider, his cock wobbling over the firm band of the cock ring.

“Do you want to come, love?” Mycroft whispered, as he rolled fiercely into a cantering stride, in and in and in, impossibly in, in with what felt like no out at all. “Do you want to come?”

“Not. Yet.” Lestrade’s eyes were crimped tight, tears seeping at the corners. “Not. Yet. Make. Me. Beg.”

Mycroft found Lestrade’s full cock, and stroked and teased and tugged. He leaned over, and caught Lestrade’s nipples, one in his fingers, the other between hot lips and tormenting teeth. “Beg, then,” he managed, between nips. “Beg for me, love.”

“Not. Yet.”

A few more thrusts and Mycroft felt himself teetering on the edge, likely to crash and loose interest or crest and be lost soon, no matter what his intent. “Soon?”

“Now. Please, Mike, let me come. Please make me come. Pleasemakemecome. Please, please, please, please…”

As Lestrade’s voice spiked, Mycroft deftly unlatched the cock ring and stroked him, thrusting steady and firm as a man drawing up water with a hand pump.

“It’s ok, love. Come now, come for me, come on—trust me, Greg. Trust me.”

Lestrade screamed and came in a vast spasm, head-to-foot arching, toes curling, teeth white in the half-lit room. Mycroft followed him a second after, sobbing as he fell across his lover’s chest.

Later that morning, awake long after Lestrade had fallen asleep, Mycroft considered it.

“You couldn’t believe in the fantasy quite enough if you knew it was me. But you couldn’t give the last surrender unless you knew it was. And until you did, it wasn’t done. You were caught between Schrodinger’s cats: the live one and the dead one. You needed both to complete the pattern, but you were afraid of getting the wrong one at the end.”

Lestrade had yawned, nuzzled close, and murmured some wordless agreement.

Mycroft was sure it was true, though. It had been about danger and trust all along, and about finding a way to give Lestrade both. They’d gotten a bit muddled on the way, though.

Lestrade could enjoy the rush of danger and guilt and shame and lust so long as he could believe just enough that his captor might be real. He could indulge himself in helplessness, like a man going to a frightening movie with a box of popcorn and the full expectation of screaming like a little girl. You had to believe just enough.

But the end game involved full, final surrender, or it reverted to ever increasing teases and torments. At some point Lestrade had to either win against all odds—or give in. Greg Lestrade was not able, within the limits of the game, to give in to his captor. Maybe if it had actually been real, and the threats weren’t softened as they had been, he could have allowed himself to break—but it would have been a real break, and he might never have recovered.

Within the parameters of the game, though, he could only surrender to Mycroft, his indulgent lover, who was playing the game and nothing more.

Trust me, Greg. I’m your lover, not your captor. I will always be your lover.

Even if we play the game again. I will always be your lover.

He felt the soft, sensual touch of Lestrade’s tongue in his memory, licking honey from his thumb. He looked into blind eyes, and shivered at the power he held. He thought of the teasing excitement of slipping into the room as the “cleaning lady,” and others over the past days, pressing buttons in love as he always had to in his work.

It had been too easy, he thought.

He had enjoyed it as much as he had abhorred it.

And if Lestrade asked, he would do it again.


End file.
